'Paint rooftops red, green or face fine'

SHIMLA: Get ready to pay Rs 50,000 and face legal action if building owners within the city fail to paint their rooftops in red or olive green colours within a week, warns

Shimla Municipal Corporation

(SMC).

In order to maintain a uniform colour pattern in the city,

Himachal Pradesh

high court had given orders to paint rooftops in 2003, 2007 and then again in 2014. Following the orders, the previous MC in 2015 had directed building owners to paint rooftops and it had issued notices to about 23,000 defaulters. Despite this, some are still prefer to not pay heed to the order.

Shimla municipal commissioner

G C Negi

said that not painting rooftops as per the MC directions was violation of the MC Act and as per its bylaws, the building owners can be fined up to Rs 50,000 for not painting their rooftops.

“Shimla city has about 40,000 buildings, of which most of the building owners have now painted their rooftops but there are still many defaulters, including government building owners. We have issued notices to 112 defaulters in the city for not painting their rooftops as directed and some more can be issued notices soon,“ he added.

He said that as per the MC's inspection most of the defaulters are from Bharari ward, followed by Kanlog, Kusumpti, New Shimla, Sanjauli, Chhota Shimla and other wards, where in each ward about seven building owners were defaulters. He said that in the city most of the defaulters were those who were having propertyrelated disputes. Other defaulters were those who had either more than one flat in the same building or those who visit their flats occasionally. In their absence the permanent ones refuse to bear charges of painting the rooftops.

On the other hand, most of the government buildings have already followed the directions, however, a few left will do so soon.

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